


Sincerely, W.

by paperback92



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drugged Sherlock, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, F/M, Hospitals, Hurt Sherlock, Missing Scene, POV Irene Adler, Protective Mycroft, everyone fiddles with sherlock's morphine tap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 21:06:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5885182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperback92/pseuds/paperback92
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She didn't get a chance to say goodbye the first time Sherlock died. She doesn't want to miss her opportunity this time.</p>
<p>Just in case.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sincerely, W.

**Author's Note:**

> This is inspired by the deleted scene from His Last Vow where Magnussen visits Sherlock in the hospital and he points out the single rose from W. 
> 
>  
> 
> Enjoy!!

The whole ordeal takes a great deal of planning in only a short period of time. She is technically dead after all. But that had never stopped Irene Adler from getting what she wanted before. 

Over the years, she had made sure that certain lines of communication stayed open so that she could keep an ear out for her favorite detective and it pays off today. The news trickles down to her rather quickly after the accident. It arrives as a text through a distant contact. 

SH shot. Recovering. London.

She books the flight under a seldom used name. Her apartment is packed up quickly. Arrangements are made for her few possessions to be dispersed. And rent paid up until the end of the month. 

She doesn’t plan on coming back.

Her hair gets refreshed with a dye that’s only a shade darker then the garish blond that she’s had to adopt for her life in the states. It’s shorter now, laying comfortably at her shoulders. It had taken ages to get accustomed to it, but she lately she has grown fond of the new length. 

She steps onto a plane in New York and steps off in London. It doesn’t hit her until she’s in the cab, just how much she’s missed London. Although New York is similar in some ways, in her opinion. Both loud and dirty, easy to slip through crowds of people and not be noticed. 

The cab deposits her outside of the hospital, and she pays with some notes and a smile. It’s early in the afternoon and she has some time to kill. 

She visits the gift shop and drifts around. She passes over sad cards and baby gifts until she comes up on a wall of flowers. 

She choices a single red rose, the darkest that they have. She has the worker place it in a vase and makes up a story about visiting her sick aunt.

She loiters in the lobby for a couple hours after that. Nothing of importance happens there, so she moves into the cafeteria. She’s been sipping on a coffee for an hour when John Watson enters the room. 

She almost doesn’t recognize him at first. Time has not been kind to the doctor. 

He’s visibly aged since she saw him last. Stress lines the corners of his eyes and around his mouth. She also spies a ring on his finger but no bride sitting with him as he pokes at a soggy sandwich. 

She watches as he struggles through his meal over the course of forty five minutes, occasionally ignoring it in favor of his phone or people watching. 

Once he looks right at her. 

At first, his eyes pass right over her but then his brow furrows and he looks back at her again. He probably thinks he’s being clever, watching her out of the corner of his eye. She humors him however, pretending to be busy with her mobile and lets him look. 

She can feel the frustration bleed out from him even from across the room. She can sympathize. She’s also confident that he won’t place her though. She wouldn’t have come if she had any doubts of being found out. 

She had heard it said, once, that the art of disguise is hiding in plain sight. She looks horribly common now with her blond hair and a bit of a tan, dressed in denim jeans and a tee shirt. 

The doctor takes one last long look at her, perhaps trying to picture her in those splendid tailored dresses that she misses so much, then gives up, shaking his head and returning to his sandwich. 

He’s not alone for much longer before Mycroft Holmes comes waltzing in with that silly umbrella of his. 

She watches as his eyes do a wide sweep of the room before joining John at the table. She’s not entirely sure if his heavy gaze really settles on her a second longer than it does everyone else or if she’s becoming paranoid.

The Ice Man didn’t faze her when she had the nation’s secrets in the palm of her hand but she no longer has that protection. 

She forces her spine to relax and busies herself with her mobile again. 

The men are too far away to hear the conversation but she can tell that it’s not a pleasant one. It’s a brief discussion, with Mycroft taking control and ending with an upset John leaving the dining hall and walking out the front door. 

Mycroft sits at the table a moment by himself, tapping his fingertips on his thigh, before getting up and sitting in the chair across from Irene.

She tries to still her racing heart.

“Can I help you?” She asks in her American accent. 

He sighs, an old weary sounding thing, but doesn’t bite. He leans back in the chair and steeples his fingers together. They sit in heavy silence for a long moment before he speaks.

“This is my fault. I thought I was through enough, but I should have known that Sherlock would interfere.”

She opens her mouth to speak but is silenced by a calmly raised hand. 

“Don’t speak. Just listen. I don’t know how you’ve flown under my radar for this long and frankly I don’t care. I know why you’re here and I have a dreadful feeling that he would want to see you as well.”

He takes a long pause, as if he is an executioner making her squirm while awaiting her punishment. In fact, it dawns on her with a sickening dread, that this is exactly the case.

“You will be allowed to see him but you will leave London tonight. You will not return while I am still alive on this Earth. If you even think about,” 

His lips curl up into a sneer. “Misbehaving while seeing my brother, I will personally bury you so deeply that not even Sherlock Holmes can save you this time. Do we have an understanding, Ms. Adler?” 

“Yes.” She says quietly. 

She knows that here is the Ice Man in his truest form. Cold and calculating, vicious and snarling, protecting his baby brother. 

Mycroft nods once. “Good. You have,” He makes a show of looking at his posh wrist watch. “Fifteen minutes until I expect Doctor Watson to return. I believe that it’ll be more than enough time. Don’t you?”

“Yes.” She says again, flushed with a strange mix of relief and embarrassment. 

How the mighty fall, she thinks ruefully. She was once a woman that had men in power dressed in three piece suits on their knees begging. Now she’s been reduced to nothing in front of  
Mycroft Holmes for the second time in her life.

His cold eyes wash over her one last time and he looks exhausted. He makes a shooing gesture. “Scatter then. Room 206.” 

She doesn’t have to be told twice. She retrieves the vase from under the table and feels his eyes fixed on her until she leaves the area. 

She finds his room quickly, the ticking tock and Mycroft’s threats breathing down her neck. She slips past the door, closing it behind her, and for a dreadful moment thinks that she’s too late. 

Sherlock, laid out on the bed pale, still, and surrounded by dozens of bouquets of flowers, looks like a corpse. 

The soft beeping of his heart monitor brings her back into herself and she curses herself for being so ridiculous. 

She places the single rose on a small table directly across from his bed, placing the card with a simple ‘W’ in front of it. She’s confident that he will understand. She then lowers herself onto the chair by his bedside. 

He looks almost ten years younger laying there. He appears peaceful and Irene knows why when she spies the morphine stand. 

It’s on full force, as it should be, but she doesn’t have time for that. She turns it down, not enough that he’ll be in great pain but at least awake enough for her to see those dazzling blue eyes again. 

She sits back down in the chair and let’s herself take the sight of him in. He’s bare chested and she can see the bandage from the surgery. Her fingers ghost over the wound. 

He was facing the shooter, she deduces. He knows them but there is no security detailing him. So no one else knows. If Mycroft Holmes knew, then she doubted anyone but he, handpicked medical staff, and John Watson would have access to this room.

Sherlock shifts in his sleep and she watches his eyes move under their lids, his long lashes brushing against those sharp cheekbones. In a moment of utter sentiment, she takes his hand in hers.

Oh, the times she had fantasied about these hands. When she heard the reports of his suicide, she thought about his hands. She traces his long musician’s fingers. She remembers wishing that she could have heard him play his beloved violin.

When she looks up, he’s watching her through glazed bleary eyes, hardly awake. She can’t help the wicked smile that spreads across her face and, for the first time in years, she feels a little like the old Irene.

“Hello, sexy.” She purrs. “How are you feeling?”

He blinks at her slowly and his lips twitch upwards slightly but he makes no move to remove his hand from her grasp. 

“Been better.” He says, his voice rough and coarse and she ignores the thrill that runs down her spine. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that baritone voice sounding like that in another situation. If circumstances were different, if it was ages ago at his flat instead of a hospital room with the clock ticking… 

“I would have you right here on this desk.”

“You’ve looked better.” She says silky instead. He gives her a small half smile and goes to shrug his shoulder when he stops suddenly, face spamming in pain. 

“Easy, love.” She shushes and cradles his hand towards her face, resting a cheek on it. “You don’t have to show off for me.”

His eyes flutter shut only to open back up again when a nurse opens the door and sticks her head in. 

“Everything ok in here? I head your heart monitor spike.” 

“Fine.” Sherlock manages to croak out. He nods at Irene. “Old University friend that came around. Got a little too excited, is all.”

The older nurse smiles like she’s witnessing some scandal happening and tuts a little at Irene. “This is the longest he’s been up since he’s been here. Don’t get him too excited, dearie. His poor heart might give out.” She laughs at her own joke and Irene smiles too, playing along. 

“I’ll try to behave.” She says.

The nurse smiles, satisfied, and pulls the door back closed. 

Irene caresses his hand again and looks up to see that its owner has his eyes shut once more. 

“Oh goodness.” She says, tracing a finger over his knuckles. “I must be dull now. I’ve put you to sleep.”

“Not sleeping, resting.” He corrects, cracking an eye open. 

She hums and her fingers continue tracing over thick veins and bone. When she glances back at him, both eyes are barely open but are watching her. 

“How is…” He trails off as his eyes flicker over her and she can see his mind calculating, slowly deducing, and working under the haze of drugs. “California?”

Irene smiles. “Close, love. I was there for a few months, though. It’s New York now.” She pauses and rests her cheek back against his hand, placing a light kiss to it. “Although I don’t think I’ll go back. I may go to Paris or Rome. Marry rich.” 

His nose crinkles at that thought. “Boring.” 

“A girls got to live.” 

“It’s a waste.” He says in a disdainful sort of way and she chooses to take it as a compliment.

“Perhaps.” She says. “But I lost the game, remember? There aren’t many opportunities left for me.” 

His lips twist into a grimace. “Change the subject.” 

“Alright then.” Her fingers move upwards, dancing along the crock of his elbow. She stops at a puffy vein. “Who did this to you?”

Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have even twitched under her gaze. But exhausted, spent, and drugged to the gills, he actually flinches. He struggles and manages to hold eye contact with her for an only moment before he starts to fade quickly, his eye lids slipping shut against his will.

“Ok, your way.” She says, allowing another small smile that he can’t see. The clock ticks on and she has only a couple of minutes now. 

“I had better get going, anyways.” She tells him. “I’d hate to be here when big brother and Doctor Watson return.” 

She stands and gathers her coat. “Oh, by the way, I left you a gift on the table. You’ll know it when you see it.” 

She leans over his almost sleeping form and presses a kiss to his cheek. The same one she kissed after returning his coat to him ages ago. She lingers, her lips brushing the lobe of his ear lightly. She pulls back a frication but can’t stop herself from hovering above him, greedily wanting to stay near him.

“Whoever you’re protecting, I hope they’re worth it.”

His eyes flutter in response and he manages to open them into slits. His hand reaches up slowly and connects with her forearm. His lips part and he tries to speak again but she shushes him softly.

“It’s alright, love. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye the first time you died. I didn’t want to miss my opportunity this time, just in case.” She gently brushes a curl away from his forehead.

“Don’t be stranger. Get in touch when you get out. We’ll have dinner.” She leans in for another indulgent kiss, this time on his full lips. 

They part and Sherlock finally slips into unconsciousness. 

She’s reached her fifteen minutes. Big brother will come after her with all the king’s horses and men if she doesn’t leave but she takes an extra moment to take Sherlock in. 

She takes him all in, every lash, curl, freckle, vein, every inch of his skin and commits it to memory. 

Just in case.

She places one last kiss to those beautiful hands and takes her leave. 

“Goodbye, Mr. Holmes.”


End file.
